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I have donned the Festive Light-up Electric XMas Tree Hat, the holiday jazz tune-mix is on the box [Eatha Kitt- "Santa Baby" right now], and I am ready to "live-blog" my review of the Canadian IMP Breakfast/Dejeuner Meal No.6 "Baked Beans" (Feves au Four) "11"

This was sent to me a couple of years ago by one of ya'll, possibly by name-not-found.

BTW- I talked with kman earlier in the week, and he did a "fix" on photos to set them with a smaller, more managable size that can once again be "clicked-on" to go full-rez.The pack out was just what we have seen in other IMP reviews: main of Beans, side of peaches, bread, jam x2, coffee, cocoa, lemon drink, creamers and sugar, S&P, wipe, matches, long toothpick, gum and a candy. This one has a Tabasco condiment as well. I really like the bag pack that the IMP uses better than the US mode. Sandwiching everything to the center between the boxed main and sides means that the whole pack is squarer and just more "ship-shape" than the higgety-piggity MREs. Seems like cookies and the like would have less chance of damage in handling under field conditions. [Momentary Aside: this sacrifice of my taste buds is not made any easier by the fact that my daughter just texted me from Florida where they are having crepes for breakfast...] The Beans and the peaches were packed by the Canadian branch of Baxters out of St-Hyacinthe(QC) and the bread by RoPack from Montreal.
Both retort boxes were dated to early 2010... days 075 and 124 respectively.
The bread came as a double "heel"... cooked as single piece, rather than sliced. Once split, it proved to be the slightly yellow color that I associate with potato breads. Either spread with some of the strawberry jams from the included packs, or as a dipper in the baked beans, it was exceptional. Firm, but soft with no signs of any aging at all. Sorry, America, the MRE "bread" is a shoe sole in comparison.

Here is the meal in full. I passed on coffee and the like since they are all pretty much one-and-the-same. However, I ate with the new set of Titanium "Entrenching Tools" I gave myself as a Christmas present.
For the benefit of you guys who are from overseas, I want to add a little explanation here about the difference between ordinary canned beans and real "baked beans".
Most of you are probably familiar with what Heinz markets overseas in the sky blue can as "Beans" in tomato sauce. Roger Daltry took a bath in a full tub of them for an old The Who album cover back in the 60s. These get marketed on this side of the pond as "pork and beans"... You get a can of navy beans in a mild tomato sauce, along with a couple of tiny pieces of fat pork belly.
True New England Baked Beans are too those sad things much as fillet mignon is to baloney. Traditionally, baked beans were cooked in the beehive oven of an open fireplace that heated the whole house. Placed in an earthenware crock with a mess of bacon, molasses, some tomato paste and onion, and of course, grandma's secret selection of spices, they slow cooked for 12 to 18 hours overnight. What comes out has the full-bodied flavor that the ordinary canned products cannot touch. Lots of people here in New England still makes something similar in their oven once or twice a month. For many people it is the frugal Saturday night dinner before their special family meal on Sunday, and six or eight different recipes from the various church-ladies involved are the staple of our New England Ham'n'Bean suppahs.
The only company in the US that I know that produces this traditional style of baked beans is the B&M Company right down here in Portland Maine. When you go around the big curve going north on Route 1 out of Portland city, you can look right in the huge windows of the B&M factory and see the six-foot copperware tubs they steam the beans in. They also produce the dense, traditional molasses brown bread, stream-cooked in the can, that is the New Englander's go-to for eating with their baked beans.
So, all of those details aside, I'm happy to report that the beans in the Canadian IMP breakfast are far closer to the B&M baked beans that I so love, than they are to the other canned varieties. While not as sweet, [I don't believe they actually use molasses] they are also nowhere near as loose, thin and over-sauced as most canned beans. You can see in the second photograph that a spoonful of these is thick with beans and a clinging sauce.
I think these could be improved with the addition of the little molasses or maple syrup and a teaspoonful of good mustard, but they're awfully tasty just the way they are. And the portion size is more than generous.
[It makes me wish that B&M would introduce a retort pouch, singleserving portion... And, as long as I'm wishing, single-serve, vac-paks of the brown bread would be really nice too. Add a retort slice of SPAM™... now you're eatin'!]
As I mentioned above, the potato style bread made an excellent product for mopping up the left overs.
Finally, while the sliced peaches had darkened with age, but were totally edible. I have never been that much of a fan of canned fruit for breakfast, so I would be far more likely to pour these over a poundcake ration as a dessert. For that they'd be perfect.

I was very pleased with the meal, and wish I knew who to thank for passing it on to me. So, instead, I will just say "Thanks" to all of you. This site has provided an awful lot more enjoyment than I ever anticipated when I came to it trying to find info on just what was in all those MRE bags my son-in-law had given me.
Also, just FYI, I just received a Christmas gift of a Chinese PLA v.9/#1 rat that I will be reviewing quite soon.
For now I am going to move on to a very well-deserved slice of pecan coffee cake heavily dosed in homemade apple butter, and start non-stop snacking my way towards dinner... Ciao, ChowHounds!

Excellent review.

Happy Christmas.

Great review and pics! I really liked the detail about true New England baked beans, I had no idea, as my experience has just been with the canned stuff. Merry Christmas!

Hey Ratattoo - that was a fine review there - love all the pictures and commentary.

I am going to keep my eye out for that IMP menu and maybe one day I will get lucky.


Speaking of Name_Not_Found, I really miss him and his work and have been trying to reach him since February.

If you happen to see this NNF, we miss you man - if you come back, I have something cool for you for a re-introductory review!


Merry Christmas to everyone on MREinfo - I hope you all have had a wonderful holiday!

A quick addition to the review:
The cereal packet seems to the probing finger to be something similar to our US product "Grape-Nuts". This seems an odd choice because there is nothing included in the IMP to help with the rehydration. GrapeNuts are, just like the name would imply, BB-sized, crunchy nuggets similar to the seeds inside a grape.
To my taste at least, they are useless unless doused with milk or yoghurt and allowed to soften.
Maybe a couple of packages of nondairy creamer and a sugar would do the trick. With water alone, they're going to be "food" and not much more.

That is a great review, as always. The bread looked outstanding for a retort pouch Military meal. The double heel aspect would work better as it is more solid.
I would like to use that with the jam, but it would go well with soups. Thanks for the lesson and information on the beans. Pork and beans are just a cheap lunch in Virginia, except picnic beans. Those are closer to what you described for Maine. The beans looked good in the photos.

Modz/kman>>
I just noticed that I got this review up in the wrong forum.
I plead early morning stupor...
If you would be so kind as to correct that, Thanks

Norton wrote: ....Pork and beans are just a cheap lunch in Virginia, except picnic beans. Those are closer to what you described for Maine. The beans looked good in the photos.

Yeah. I am aware that that golden retriever pushes "Bushes" beans for you folks down south, however, I will hold to my stance that if you have ever tried the gen-U-ine B&M beans you will never, ever go back.
I am fairly certain that B&M actually have national distribution now. They're well worth trying.

I found this to be an extremely informative review, over on this side of the "pond" we only know of the Heinz baked beans. ( Respect for the mention of Roger Daltry, from the film "Tommy" ).
I would never have thought that there could and would be a great variance in the humble bean between the differing States featured on this forum.

I am slowly picking up on many of the terms used on here, however, I do have to Google many things I cannot readily understand, but please carry on.

Regards, Norman.

Vlaanderen wrote:....picking up on many of the terms used on here, however, I do have to Google many things I cannot readily understand, but please carry on.

Sorry, man. I have terrible habit of typing out the way some of us talk in regional accents. For instance, "suppah" is just plain supper, but Mainers and old line Bostonians tend to turn terminal "R"s into "ah"s... you probably wouldn't even find it in a dictionary or Googled. It's just the way people actually talk.
The classic line is "Paahk yah cah in Haavaad yaad".

I have lived all over the country, and am an accent chameleon. If I'm down in North Carolina I attended drawl like I did as a child.
I probably be just as lost if somebody were to type out a Northumberland accent... I am given to understand that even you Brits can't always tell what they're talking about.